Since it appears that I helped to start this thread, let me do what I can to finish it. Responding to some facetiae posted by David Merriman, I suggested:

Very good. If I could offer one minor change, how 'bout:

Dorothy Denning? Clip 'er!

Which prompted Phil Karn to inquire:

Uh, how come we can't stick to attacking the message, rather than the messenger?

To which Ed Carp replied:

Because in this case, the messenger is an integral part of the message.

This kind of parallels my thinking when I offered that mostly-off-the-cuff suggestion. I thought David had hit upon a clever turn of phrase -- a slogan of exhortation to cypherpunks to truncate Dr. Denning's *influence*. I did not intend an ad hominem attack, nor did I expect something that would fit on a bumpersticker to substitute for rational debate. As Phil Karn observed elsewhere:

Dorothy Denning may be a naive pawn of the government. She may hold beliefs that appall the rest of us. She may have lost whatever credibility she had in the crypto community by her position. But I still prefer to attack that position and the (il)logic behind it rather than to resort to attacking the person expressing it.

Quite right. Granted, Dr. Denning has lost her credibility with certain elements of "the crypto community." Unfortunately, those folks are not the decision-makers who'll decide the fate of proposals such as Clipper. She remains a valuable tool to those in government who want to advance such agendas. As Ed Carp commented:

I think the reason people attack the messenger is because people in the government listen to her, and I for one am exasperated beyond words to know that my government is paying attention to such an idiotic scheme, and (BTW) violating every known law of security to do so. Denning, in a very real sense, represents the attitudes of the NSA and the people controlling this whole scheme and trying to foist it off onto people.

But what better way to blunt her effectiveness as an advocate than to demostrate the folly of that which she so wholeheartedly advocates? Still, as Tim May reminded us:

Practically speaking, a bumber sticker saying "Denning--Clip her" might be understood by as many as one out of ten thousand of those who read it....not a very convincing meme. (Yes, "crypto anarchy" is equally arcane, vaguely disturbing, and equally unconvincing...but I'm not sporting a bumper sticker on this, nor do I expect to convert the masses.)

He is, of course, correct. And this whole thread has become a bit of a tempest in a teapot. I apologize for my part in what I'm sure many regard as an improper consumption of bandwidth. AR