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By Ashley Killough, CNN

November 10, 2014 -- Updated 1618 GMT (0018 HKT)

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Washington (CNN) -- Sen. Rand Paul declared the war against ISIS "illegal" in a new opinion piece Monday, urging conservatives to speak out against President Barack Obama's decision not to seek congressional authorization for military action against the terrorist group.

"This war is now illegal. It must be declared and made valid, or it must be ended," the Kentucky Republican wrote in an op-ed published Monday by the Daily Beast.

The U.S. began airstrikes in Iraq in early August and in Syria in September, citing a 2001 measure known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as the president's legal basis for going after terrorist threats.

Paul cites the War Powers Resolution of 1973 in stressing his long-held position that all military action must be approved by Congress. The exception is when a situation is considered urgent. In that case, a president has 60 days to get authorization after military action. If there's no approval from Congress, the president has 30 days to end the mission.

Rand Paul plants feet between both sides of foreign policy debate

While Paul said he doesn't think the War Powers Resolution specifically applies to the ISIS situation -- because the U.S. had not been attacked -- he notes that even if it did, the president's time would be up.

"Taking military action against ISIS is justified. The president acting without Congress is not," he wrote, reiterating a stance he's held since September. This fall Paul has described the airstrikes in Syria as appropriate action but said Obama's method for doing so was "unconstitutional."

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Rand Paul: War on ISIS 'is now illegal'

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has made key decisions about how to launch his presidential campaign for the 2016 Republican nomination, including a plan to headquarter his effort in Louisville and opting to run for re-election to the Senate at the same time he moves forward with the national race.

Coming off a midterm campaign blitz in 35 states, Paul has summoned a few dozen advisers a mix of veterans of his father Ron Pauls insurgent campaigns and more mainstream GOP leaders for a closed-door summit at a Washington hotel on Wednesday to discuss his future plans.

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In a POLITICO interview, the 51-year-old senator talked unblinkingly about the possibility of a run, and sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and Hillary Clinton none too subtly raising the issue of her age. At 67, she is 16 years older than he is.

(Also on POLITICO: Young guns vs. gavels)

I think all the polls show if she does run, shell win the Democrat nomination, he said. But I dont think its for certain. Its a very taxing undertaking to go through. Its a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency.

Paul, who will face a much more crowded field on the Republican side but starts out as a slight front-runner in public polls, has begun an aggressive early campaign against Clinton. In the interview, he argued that her hawkish position inside the Obama administration for military intervention in places such as Libya will stack up unfavorably against his views.

Her main Achilles heel is that she didnt provide an adequate defense for our consulate in Libya, Paul said during a trip to Georgia just before the midterms. And also, she didnt think through the unintended consequences of getting involved in the Libyan war. So I think youd have an interesting dynamic, were there a [Republican] nominee that was for less intervention overseas and in the Middle East and thats fiscally conservative. Youve never seen that kind of combination before, and I think theres a lot of independent voters, actually, that might be attracted to that kind of message.

Paul reiterated his long-standing assertion that he wont officially decide about a presidential run until the spring, but his advisers have already laid out a timetable: They expect the campaign will be a go by mid-April, with an announcement as quickly after that as his staff can put together a fly-around to the early states.

(Also on POLITICO: The war over Obama's new war in Iraq)

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Rand's grand plan

Unschooling Made Me a Libertarian
Unschooling Made Me a Libertarian.

By: Cbnmj23

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Unschooling Made Me a Libertarian - Video

Conventional wisdom holds that Libertarian Party candidates draw votes away from Republican candidates. However, some exit polling from Tuesdays midterms shows that wisdom may not be true.

Reasons Brian Doherty looked at the exit polling in North Carolina and Virginia and found that its not necessarily true.

It isnt common for Democrats to accuse Libertarians of spoiling elections for them, but a look at NBC News exit polls show that Haugh voters indeed came more from people who consider themselves moderate (5 percent of self-identified moderates went Haugh) and even liberal (4 percent of liberals voted for Haugh) than from conservatives (only 2 percent of whom voted for Haugh). Those were the only three choices for self-identification.

Only 1 percent each of self-identified Democrats or Republicans voted Haugh, while 9 percent of Independents did. (Those again were the only choices.) (Independents otherwise went 49-42 for Tillis over Hagan.)

In other exit poll results, Haughs portion of the vote fell pretty steadily as age groups got olderhe got 9 percent of the 18-24 vote, and only 2 percent of the 50-and-over crowd.

Haugh did strongest among white women in race/gender breakdowns, with 5 percent of that crowd, and only 1 percent of black men or black womanand no polled number of Latino men or women.

Other interesting Haugh exit poll results: His overall man/woman breakdown was the same, 4 percent of each in the exit poll. Haughs numbers got progressively smaller as voter income got biggerhe earned 6 percent of the under-$30K vote but only 1 percent of the over-$200K vote. Libertarians arent just for plutocrats.

As Doherty points out in an earlier piece, Sean Haugh, the Libertarian candidate in North Carolina, ran as a left-libertarian who was generally opposed to cutting social services. As for Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate in Virginia, Doherty believes that Sarvis may have cost Ed Gillespie the Senate race. However, Sarvis e-mailed Doherty and says otherwise:

One cant assume the 3 percent Rs would be voting [Gillespie] in my absenceits quite likely these R voters would have joined the 7 percent of Rs voting for Warner. Polls throughout the race showed Warner enjoying double-digit support among Rs, and a fair number of Rs told us they cant stomach voting for [Gillespie]. A lot of business-type Republicans consider Warner acceptable, so probably many Rs who really disliked [Gillespie] voted for me because I was preferable to Warner, but would otherwise have voted Warner not Gillespie. So those R Sarvis voters were taken from Warner not Gillespie.

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The Liberty Papers Blog Archive Which Party Are ...

Democrat Pollster Celinda Lake: The Republicans Have A "Very Good Turnout Operation" And "It Real"
Democrat Pollster Celinda Lake: The Republicans Have A "Very Good Turnout Operation" And "It Real" (November 5, 2014)

By: RNC Comms

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Democrat Pollster Celinda Lake: The Republicans Have A "Very Good Turnout Operation" And "It Real" - Video