Help with Dynamic menu

I know I’m going to kick myself when i find out the simple mistake i made but i just don’t see it.
The prob i have is I am try to get the menu to highlight base on category or posts in cats. It worked at first perfectly but for some reason it just stopped working
In my header

<?php if ( is_home() ) { $current = 'front'; }
elseif ( in_category(2) ) { $current = 'news'; }
elseif ( in_category(4) ) { $current = 'sports'; }
elseif ( in_category(5) ) { $current = 'comics'; }
elseif ( in_category(9) ) { $current = 'features'; }
elseif ( in_category(10) ) { $current = 'opinions'; }
elseif ( in_category(6) ) { $current = 'arts'; }
elseif ( is_page(51) ) { $current = 'archives'; }
elseif ( is_page(23) ) { $current = 'about'; }
elseif ( is_page(24) ) { $current = 'ads'; }
elseif ( is_page(52) ) { $current = 'contact'; }
elseif ( is_page(22) ) { $current = 'rss'; } ?>

<style type="text/css">
#<?php echo $current; ?> a{
 background:#bd4b01 url(http://thespectrum.freehostia.com/wp-content/themes/spectrum/images/<?php if (is_page()){echo 'checkh';}else {echo 'articlesh1';}?>.gif 6px 4px no-repeat;
color:#fff;}
</style>

Then in the sidebar.php i have
<ul class="sections">
<li id="front"><a ...>Home</a></li>
etc
</ul>

Everything looks like it should work in the code but it just doesn’t

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