Sorry, there were some typos in my original post.  I'd generally
offered an example not the actual xml.  I have amended the example
based on the comments.

This is all of done thus far, the XSL is as I currently have it.  The
Transforming code does little more than apply an argument and apply the
XSL to the XML
<Folders>
 <folder>
   <link author="ME" url="something"/>
   <link author="YOU" url="something else"/>
   <folder>
     <link author="ME" url="something"/>
     <folder>
      <link author="ME" url="something"/>
      <link author="YOU" url="something else"/>
    </folder>
  </folder>
 </folder>
</Folders

 My XSL looks like
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" version="1.0">
 <xsl:param name="Filter" select="'default value'"/>
 <xsl:template match="node() | @* | / | root">
   <xsl:copy>
 	    <xsl:apply-templates select="node() | @*" />
 </xsl:copy>
 </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match='link[@author=$Filter]' />
 </xsl:stylesheet>