def remove_whilespace_nodes(node, unlink=False):
    """Removes all of the whitespace-only text decendants of a DOM node.
    
    When creating a DOM from an XML source, XML parsers are required to
    consider several conditions when deciding whether to include
    whitespace-only text nodes. This function ignores all of those
    conditions and removes all whitespace-only text decendants of the
    specified node. If the unlink flag is specified, the removed text
    nodes are unlinked so that their storage can be reclaimed. If the
    specified node is a whitespace-only text node then it is left
    unmodified."""
    
    remove_list = []
    for child in node.childNodes:
        if child.nodeType == dom.Node.TEXT_NODE and \
           not child.data.strip():
            remove_list.append(child)
        elif child.hasChildNodes():
            remove_whilespace_nodes(child, unlink)
    for node in remove_list:
        node.parentNode.removeChild(node)
        if unlink:
            node.unlink()