WP_Query issue within sidebar

I have a a “featured post box” within my sidebar (it’s displayed immediately underneath the Google map here). For some reason – on the homepage only – it is not listing any posts within the Featured tab. If you navigate to another page – for example, here – you’ll see that it’s pulling posts into the Featured tab without any issue. The code for this is directly in my sidebar.php file, and thus it’s identical for each page on the site and shouldn’t differ, right? I did notice that the code used to pull actual posts onto the pages is different – on the homepage, it’s a WP_Query, and on other pages, it’s have_posts. Could definitely use some help troubleshooting this issue. Thanks!

Here’s the code used to pull this feature:

<ul class="list1" id="feat">
				<?php
					include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/includes/version.php');
					$the_query = new WP_Query('cat=' . $ex_feat  . '&showposts=10&orderby=date&order=asc');
					while ($the_query->have_posts()) : $the_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID;
				?>

					<li><a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

				<?php endwhile; ?>
			</ul>