I read somewhere that IE7+ has stopped the specific CSS things from working (thanks Microsoft).
Because I know you used to be able to do something like *:HTML and only IE would pick it up, or something like that.
Hopefully someone can help you out, but in general IE sucks and I have just come up with the conclusion that if the majority of the site works, is attractive and readable except for one little padding pixel being out of place, then just forget about it. Take megamoose.net for an example, the top header looks horrible in IE but I couldn't give a hoot
Mark