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"There has to be another way," the Kentucky Republican tweeted. "We must find it together. So tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program."

The National Security Agency's authorities -- which, among other powers, allow the agency to collect telephone data on millions of Americans and store that data for five years -- will end at midnight Sunday unless the Senate approves an extension.

RELATED: What happens if the Patriot Act provisions expire?

Last week, Republicans were unable to find 60 votes to break a filibuster on either an extension of the existing law or a House-passed bill, the USA Freedom Act, that would have telecommunications companies hold the data and require the government to get a warrant to access it.

Paul and his allies are limited in their ability to derail the legislation altogether. But their opposition to any bill authorizing the programs would mean the Senate would be stuck in many hours of debate -- perhaps lasting days -- before anything could be passed by majority vote because of complex Senate procedural rules. By then, the authorities would have lapsed and the government would need time to get them back online.

In a statement, Paul explained why he was taking a stand in the Senate.

"The callous use of general warrants and the disregard for the Bill of Rights must end. Forcing us to choose between our rights and our safety is a false choice and we are better than that as a nation and as a people," he said.

Paul also acknowledged in his statement that there is a need for a "robust intelligence agency" to defend against terrorism, but added, "We do not need to give up who we are in order to defeat them."

If there is no agreement by Sunday, not only would the government need to stop its bulk collection of phone data, but also authorities would not be able to conduct surveillance of so-called "lone wolf" terrorists who are not American citizens and not believed to be part of an identified terrorist group. The government would also lose its ability to conduct "roving wiretaps," a program that gives the government the ability to track various phones used by the same person.

RELATED: Rand Paul seizes political moment with NSA protest

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Rand Paul warns of plan to derail NSA vote - CNNPolitics.com

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul had some harsh words Wednesday for Republicans who have blamed the rise of Islamic extremism in Iraq and Syria on American disengagement with the Middle East.

In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Paul was asked about the criticism he's received from GOP hawks like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who have argued that America's failure to arm moderate rebel groups in the Syrian civil war created space for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to grow.

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Paul, who recently announced he is running for president, discussed immigration, criminal justice, the GOPs inclusiveness and more on Face the ...

"I would say it's exactly the opposite," Paul said. "ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb [Syrian dictator Bashar] Assad, which would have made ISIS's job even easier."

Paul has embraced a less muscular American approach to global events, arguing the U.S. should be more reticent in committing its own resources to foreign conflicts - either by sending its U.S. troops to intervene or sending U.S. munitions to warring parties.

That belief has put Paul at odds with much of the rest of his party, and the debate is already shaping the GOP's 2016 presidential primary - Paul is running for president, and a host of prominent Republican hawks, like Graham, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have either declared a bid or signaled they plan to declare soon.

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Iraqi forces say they've surrounded three sides of the city after launching a new offensive against ISIS. It took the militants only a few hours ...

Another prospective candidate, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, said Wednesday that Paul's comments Wednesday morning are "a perfect example of why Senator Paul is unsuited to be Commander-in-Chief."

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Rand Paul: "ISIS exists...because of hawks" in the GOP ...

The Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate is thrilling his libertarian-leaning base with a campaign against the NSA and stinging criticism of his party's history of Middle East meddling. But the moves are enraging other Republicans eyeing the White House with his opponents zeroing in on Paul's comments this week that "ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party."

Rick Santorum slammed Paul's remarks as "fundamentally a misunderstanding of the nature of the enemy we face."

"I would expect to hear that from maybe Bernie Sanders," he said, referring to the liberal Democratic presidential candidate. "I don't expect to hear that from somebody running for the Republican nomination."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who said this week that Paul is "unsuited" to be commander-in-chief, told CNN Thursday that the senator's hawks comment must be "condemned."

"This is a statement that's even to the left of what Sen. Clinton or President Obama would say," Jindal said.

Rick Perry, meanwhile, accused Paul of a "basic misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq and Syria."

Indeed, Paul is becoming the preferred punching bag of Republican presidential hopefuls. Of course, many of them are eager to attack Paul to win media attention and bolster their national security credentials. But the bashing will be a persistent challenge for Paul as he navigates the tricky challenge of galvanizing his base, dominated by isolationists, while competing in a Republican primary that remains heavily influenced by traditional foreign policy hawks.

READ: Rand Paul: Republican brand 'sucks' and is 'broken'

The Paul-hating could come to a head this weekend when the Senate convenes for a rare Sunday session in a last-ditch attempt to prevent key NSA surveillance tactics from lapsing at midnight -- something both President Barack Obama and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have sought to avoid.

Paul hasn't hesitated to deploy every procedural tool available to thwart Senate action, leaving him with no friends on the issue among GOP presidential contenders.

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Rand Paul: The GOP's punching bag - CNNPolitics.com

The rapid industrialization and growth of a world economy in the Gilded Age gave birth to a reform movement in the last decade of the nineteenth-century that hoped to solve the many problems encountered in this swiftly changing era, the Progressive movement.

They feared that the future of Democracy itself was at stake. The hordes of people flowing into the cities, both from overseas and the "Great Migration" of African-Americans from the South, threatened to subvert the "American experiment" and corrupt the civil order. The Progressives thought newcomers must "forsake their language and obliterate their cultural differences" (Gilmore, 8). With all traces of foreign culture removed, these immigrants would then reflect the "traditional American ideal." Though a few Progressives believed in the possibility of a multicultural

Many Progressives tried to enact legislation that curbed immigrants' rights or put quotas on certain nationalities' admission into the United States. At one point, this attempt at exclusion came into direct conflict with the organizers of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. In California there was already significant resentment of Japanese ownership of farmland and many politicians campaigned for the prohibition of their rights to own property. The President of the Exposition made a plea to the state legislature that such restrictions on Asians would result in the withdrawal of Chinese and Japanese participation which would destroy the opportunity to trade with these giants from the Far East. He suggested the legislature wait until the Exposition was over. The Progressive former mayor of San Francisco and its then current US Senator, James Phelan, countered by saying:

Despite the efforts of Moore and the directors of the Exposition, the Alien Land Law passed in 1913 and remained a law until the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1952. Regardless, the Chinese and Japanese contingents participated in the Exposition despite their opposition to the bill (ibid.).

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The Progressives - University of Virginia

These are strange timesfor HillaryClinton.

Reportedly prepared to embrace and acknowledge the historic nature of her quest for the White House, this week candidate Clinton engaged in a particularly awkward and complicated political dance. Clinton, a second-wave feminist minted in Illinois and refined at Wellesley College and Yale Law School, is a former secretary of state, former senator and first lady who changed the rules of that last job, leading a contentious and ultimately failed effort to create a national health-care system during her husband's presidency. Clinton is a woman of substance. And, in South Carolina this week, she has been a woman eager to highlight her work ...to support, to assist and to aid Barack Obama in his own historic presidency.

Speaking to an audience of Democratic women in South Carolina on Wednesday -- many of whom the New York Times described as black -- Clinton joked aboutthe at-times-rancorous 2008 South Carolina primary in which shefaced then-candidate Obama. Then, she tried to make nice in a way that the campaign apparently believes will work.

I went to work for him as secretary of state because he and I share many of the same positions about what should be done in the next presidency, Clinton told the crowd, according to the New York Times.

Clinton, potentially the nation's first female president, was there to make it clear: She would be a good president because she supported and assisted Barack Obama and is ready to continue his work.

As the Times also noted, though, Clinton assiduously avoided any mentions of race or the nature of her 2008 campaign's clashes with the Obama camp. Back then, Bill Clinton angered some Obama supporters and some committed Democrats who were Clinton supporters when he described Obama's opposition to the Iraq war asthe biggest fairytale I've ever seen.Hillary Clinton irritated some with comments that seemed to minimize the contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. to civil rights reforms and emphasized the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson instead.

Both Clintons have described the reaction to their comments as overblown, misinterpreted and taken out of context. They have denied that they contained any racial subtext.

But the comments were understood by some in South Carolina where a substantial share of the electorate isAfrican American, very differently. When the primary was over and Obama had won, longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who is black, told The New Yorker, "It's pretty widespread now that African Americans have lost a lot of respect for Bill Clinton."

That was the Clinton campaign that at least some of the Democratic women at Wednesday's event remembered when Clinton came to South Carolina this weekand gave a speech using a Southern twang that caught a little attention. And it's against that backdrop that what Clinton had to say in South Carolina this week was less a concession to anyone's ideas about the proper or traditional role of women asit was to say, I know. Barack Obama won. I supported his agenda and did work for Obama around the world. I'm an ally. Now, I'd like to lead.

That work was necessary in South Carolina in a way that it probably won't be elsewhere, because of the 2008 controversy.

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Hillary Clinton: A woman ready to lead because she ...