I know that you can't use text-align in CSS on colgroup, however, in the HTML 4.01 spec an example table is given using align="center". However, I can't seem to get their exact code to work (checked in moz and webkit)!? Should I care to request a correction? Looks like I just need to move on to CSS selectors!?
Definitely move on. align on colgroup was one of those HTML 4 spec features that never got widely implemented. I note that HTML5 does not even mention it. It's neither valid, nor marked as obsolete, which suggests that, to browser manufacturers, it never really existed at all.