The checked="checked" thing bothers me too. It's sloppy, and I don't care 
what wasn't considered in advance. It seems easy to fix. If any of the 
arguments to the contrary are valid, they went over my head, or maybe I 
didn't read them carefully enough.

At the same time, templating languages and whatever else creates HTML, 
XHTML, etc., should do what has to be done to make things work.