samuel adams rose 12% after raising its 2010 earnings forecast saying it's ship 1g 2% more than last year. >>> the justice department sued bp and other companies for the gulf oil spill hoping to get recovered for damage above and beyond what's been paid. >>> they produced agreements including -- and china's continued barriers. speaking up, china's biggest expansion there yet, opening up 200 new restaurants next year. >> and finally one abu dhabi hotel posts the most expensive christmas tree ever with a vool you of over $11 million. it's a fake 40-foot evergreen decorated with bows but it's the necklaces and earrings draped on the branches that gives them the extra value. >>> the heat winning streak hits doublegys and baseball loses a hall of famer. >>> plus the celtics knicks went back and forth with a thriller that went above and beyond. your early morning sports headlines are straight ahead. >>> an active winter weather pattern continues right across the country. your regional forecast is coming up. you're watching "early today." >>> good morning. if you're just waking up, this is

i wanted to talk about familiar character like samuel adams, thomas young, some of the leading patriotsn boston. third, i wanted to talk about who were these apartments. this is a question that historians have largely avoided because it's maddening to try and figure out who these guys were. it's hard to tell the fake be stories from the real stories. it's like woodstock, right? everybody said they were there. but i managed to come up with at the end of the book an appendix that lists about 100 men who i think were -- who probably have the best case for having been there. and the reason i wanted to come up with a good, workable list was to find out how old were they, what kind of jobs had they had, had they had any previous political experience, and i thought it was important for people to understand, you know, who were these participants, why did they do what they did? that's a question that i think most historians have avoided. ask finally, i wanted to talk about the involvement of women in boston. they help connect the tea party participants to one another because some of them were re

people like samuel adams, but also including some more middle merchants and craftsmen. you know, there's some indication that they were the ones who were kind of coordinating this protest, you know, making sure that the positive tone yangs did what they had to do and that they pulled in some of their employees and apprentices and associates and said, okay, we've got a job to do, let's put on indian disguises and to this. there's some indication it was a top-down affair. but i also found this very weird document of a bunch of yale students in the early 19th century who were traveling around the countryside, and they run into this old guy who talks about his experiences at the boston tea party, and he says it was a bunch of craftsmen who got together and said, you know, we are the ones who have to do something about the tea party. and they tried to get a leader, one of these elite leaders to back them, and guys would come in, and they would kind of, you know, dance around and say i don't know if i can countenance this. and one guy the farthest he's willing to go is say if