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THE MORNING AFTER

I'll get to the title reference after this: between meetings, I've been allowed to break away and give you a short rundown of our plans for the evening, which will be a mixture of the following: autism, terrorism, Alzheimer's, the environment, aviation and more. 

And we might just mention the end of the line for the Sopranos.  While I get the fact that it's not for everyone, for those of us who love the show, it's been quite the time.  The much-hashed-out ending did what it was meant to do: I have a very good friend who flatly assumed the sudden ending to represent the end of Tony's life.  Others who watched assumed life goes on for Tony -- as a mobster under constant threat of indictment, as a husband, father, businessman, patient and sociopath.  We now know The Man In The Member's Only Jacket is the owner of a pizza restaurant in Bucks County, Penn. who came here from Italy in 1976.  I thought I examined the show in detail in my other day job -- but today there are all kinds of deconstructions on the Web -- proving again that this has been much more than just a television show for those of us who love it ... and will miss it.

Please make time to take a look at today's featured Medal of Honor recipient.

I hope you can join us tonight for the Monday edition of NBC Nightly News.

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mMedal of Honor: William R. Charette

Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.

WILLIAM R. CHARETTE
Hospital Corpsman third Class, U.S. Navy Attached to Company F, 2nd Battalion, Panmunjom, Korea, 1953 -- Sole Surviving Corpsman 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division
William Charette’s parents died when he was four, and he was raised by an uncle. After high school, he took a job on a Lake Michigan ferryboat, which led him to join the Navy. There was a shortage of medical corpsmen, so he volunteered. He worked in a Navy hospital for a year, then volunteered again, this time as a medic with the Marine Corps. He was assigned to a rifle company in the Seventh Marines in Korea. In the spring of 1953, Navy Corpsman Charette’s Marine unit was in an area near Panmunjom between North and South Korea, guarding the route to the South Korean capital of Seoul.

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McDonald's wants moms' approval

CNBC's Phil LeBeau will report on tonight's broadcast about a new effort at McDonald's to convince moms that the company's food is a good choice for their families. Check out a preview on CNBC's Web site.

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Around-the-world with the SecDef

"Doomsday planes," C-17s, helos, motorcades, Afghan commando squads... it's the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. It's also how an NBC News team spent a week traveling with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Producer Courtney Kube, soundman Johnnie Roth, and I circumnavigated the globe from May 30th-June 6th, filing dispatches from far-flung places like Hawaii, Singapore, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and France. We were the U.S. television pool team on the trip, which means we had the responsibility of covering the secretary for all five of the major networks.

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Early Nightly is up

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'I could have done without the cat'

"The Sopranos" television series is officially over and Brian has his say about the last episode on Slate.com:

"Holsten's is a local institution on Broad Street in Bloomfield, N.J. It's the kind of place with a ceramic tile facade, and where they still make their own candy and ice cream. When my father worked in Bloomfield, my mother and I used to meet him occasionally after work there. It's filled with regular customers who know the menu, and the place, by heart. It's a classic, family-style throwback. It is as good as any other place for it all to end."

Read the complete Slate article
MSNBC TV's Willie Geist riffs on the final episode
Video: On the set of "The Sopranos":
Brian talking with Edie Falco | Brian talking with David Chase
Photos: On the set of "The Sopranos"

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Rock Star

All of us can occasionally benefit from a change of scenery.  Perhaps no one more than President Bush.  Battered by low approval numbers at home, and a Democratic Senate with which he rarely sees eye to eye, he had to be looking particularly forward to at least one stop on his current European tour.  The video out of Albania today says it all.  The President was literally swept into the arms of crowds who lined the streets of Tirana eager to greet the American president as a hero.  The Reuters wire service described it as an "ecstatic rock-star reception." Remarking on Albania's communist past, the president called Albania a society that had "known tyranny" and overcame it.  Our Kelly O' Donnell is traveling with the president and will have a full report on his welcome, and what he said there about independence for Kosovo.

John Yang will report on the tough week facing the president when he returns to Washington, including a no-confidence vote Senate Democrats plan to hold regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, as well as Mr. Bush's visit to Capitol Hill to try and persuade Republican senators to get the derailed immigration bill back on the tracks.

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