A soft’spoken teacher posted the words “Impeach Bush” in a public garden, and Kent police cast him as an outlaw.

Today Kevin Egler is fighting that in Kent Municipal Court, and the case is emerging as a free’speech issue of interest well beyond the boundaries of placid Portage County.

Police ticketed Egler for unlawfully advertising in a public place because he put up a free’standing sign near the intersection of Haymarket Parkway and Willow and Main streets.

Egler said the officer who cited him July 25 asked: “Why don’t you put the signs in your own yard?” Egler said his response was that he’s a taxpayer and views the public space very much as his yard.

At 45, Egler is too young to have experienced the heyday of anti-war activity in Kent. He was only 8 when Ohio National Guardsmen shot and killed four Kent State University students during a campus protest on May 4, 1970. He went to the university a decade later, putting out an underground newspaper and acquiring an accounting degree.

Egler and about a dozen friends and associates have placed hundreds of anti-war messages around Ohio and neighboring states over the past 10 months. He said the effort is fueled by the notion that President Bush’s military response after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was both illegal and immoral.

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