I wonder where the feds going with this

The Siegelman grand jury went back to work yesterday, and it sounds as if they are leaving no stone unturned:

(B'ham News) Sen. Gerald Dial, D-Lineville, said he was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury Tuesday to discuss a 1997 bill that allowed the Talladega Superspeedway to sell alcohol on Sundays.

Siegelman was lieutenant governor when the bill was passed. Siegelman ally Dewayne Freeman, then a senator from Huntsville, was the sponsor of the legislation.

Dial said he amended the bill when it got bogged down in the Senate. He said he was asked Tuesday about the legislative process and the duties of the lieutenant governor. At the time, the lieutenant governor exercised great control over which bills were approved in the Senate.

Senator Dial sounds almost as confused as I am over how this might relate to the Siegelman investigation. From today's Mobile Register:

Dial said he didn't know why prosecutors wanted to know about the bill, which in its original form would have allowed Sunday liquor sales at the racetrack and at a golf course owned and operated by the Retirement Systems of Alabama.

As Dial remembered it, operators of other golf courses in the county objected to allowing only the RSA course to sell liquor. The senator amended the bill, he said, to limit Sunday sales to the racetrack, and that's how it passed.

"I don't see how it connects to him (Siegelman), but I don't see the whole picture," said Dial.

Me, neither, but it probably boils down to "who's back did he scratch, and why did he scratch it?" Here's more from the Register.

There were at least two other witnesses Tuesday, including a woman named Debbie Taylor who arrived with an attorney. Taylor declined to provide the reason she was called to the federal courthouse in Montgomery, or to identify herself in a way that might suggest her reason for being there.

The day's other known witness was Tuscaloosa County Administrator Farrington Snipes. He arrived with a stack of files and left without them. The files contained information on road and other infrastructure projects in the county, said Snipes.

Snipes said he was asked to testify about the process by which a project originates, then receives funding, such as with assistance from state agencies. Snipes said he was asked if he knew certain people, but he would not publicly identify any of those individuals, other than to say that Siegelman was not among them.