WP-Grins Validation Question

I’m currently running WP 1.2 with a number of plugins and hacks including wp-grins. In trying to make sure that my blog remains XHTML compliant, I found an 4 “errors” that I’d like to clean up. Though my page still validates, I get the message “character “&” is the first character of a delimiter but occurred as data” four times.
See here for yourself and for the code:
Basically, it’s a matter of back-to-back ‘&’ symbols on two occasions. If I change them to ‘&’ the javascript within wp-grins no longer works. (By not working, I mean clicking on the smilie logos above the comment box no longer places those smilies within the comment box–which is crucial to this plugin/hack.)
I looked at Alex’s site and he has it set up the same way with no modifications to adjust for this. I’ve also searched this support site and note found reference to this issue.
Any ideas or input from the coders on here? Thanks in advance!