WordPress question regarding Categories and Posts.

[definitive]

I'm currently trying to make a menu on a page which would display a vertical list of four items. These items are post names which belong to a category named "name_of_menu".

Here's the code for the loop so far:

<ul>
<?php $posts = get_posts( "category_name=name_of_menu&numberposts=4&orderby=date&order=ASC" ); foreach($posts as $post) : ?>

<li>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

What I'm trying to do is have the active page's (since these 4 items will be repeated across the 4 pages) hyperlink be a different color from the rest.

If I use something like

.current_page_item > a,
.current-post-ancestor a,
.current_page_ancestor > a {
	color: #aabbcc;
}

and add the class to the <li> in the code above, then it makes all the topic hyperlinks that color instead of the active page's. I also tried

<li><?php if (is_home()){echo " class="current_page_item";}?>>

as well, but that doesn't work correctly either.

Anyone ever deal with this issue before and could provide some help?