It's time for a regularly-scheduled checkup (to use a medical metaphor) on how Obamacare's doing. Three months in, things do seem to be improving. So much so, in fact, that January will (one way or another) see a shift in the political discussion to other aspects of the health reform law than just the HealthCare.gov website. Whatever way the story gets spun next month, it will be different than the prevailing storyline up to this point. But before we get to that, let's take a look at the progress made in the past month.

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Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

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Welcome everyone to our year-end awards columns! Every year, we pre-empt our normal "Friday Talking Points" columns for two weeks, in order to take a look back at the year that was.

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Let's take a quick look back at the week that was, which was actually chock full of political news. We'll begin in outer space and end up with amusing holiday news, so buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a fast ride this week. So fast that we're not even going to explain the column's title until you reach the talking points at the end, just to warn you. Ready? OK, here we go....

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Is "Obamacare" approaching a political milestone of sorts? Well, maybe. But first let me explain those "scare" quotes. Obamacare (the program itself) is of course reaching milestones, and will continue to do so for a while. But "Obamacare" (the name Republicans have been using) is what I'm talking about here -- the term itself, not the program. And that may indeed be about to hit a political milestone. Because the first Republican has come out in favor of not calling it "Obamacare" anymore, and instead referring to it by its full "Orwellian" name (his term, not mine): the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

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A little-noted anniversary happened this week -- because it has been 80 years since Americans came to their senses and passed the Twenty-First Amendment, thus repealing the lunacy of Prohibition. So there's something to raise a glass to, over the weekend. So to speak.

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Last Sunday, Senator Bob Menendez suggested a fairly good idea for further economic sanctions on Iran. Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has come up with an answer which could possibly satisfy both sides -- those who support the diplomatic track and those who are pushing for harsher sanctions for Iran. The idea is to let the Senate go ahead and pass further sanctions, but to trigger them to the timeline of the ongoing negotiations, so that new sanctions wouldn't kick in until after the six month period of talks. If a permanent deal is struck before that time, then new sanctions (obviously) wouldn't take effect, but if no deal is reached by the deadline, then the sanctions begin automatically.

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November was either a very bad month for President Obama in job approval polling, or his worst month ever. Take your choice.

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The Obama administration just rolled out what could be called "version 1.1" of HealthCare.gov, the website set up as a health insurance exchange for Americans who live in states which didn't set up their own state-level exchanges. In the computer world, "version 1.1" normally means "the first bug-fix version" of a piece of software. After two months of nothing short of disaster, the White House is now confident that the website is ready for prime time. Mostly.

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Because yesterday's column was a wee bit un-holiday-spirit-ish, I offer up my thanks today. I am thankful for the web. I am thankful that I can sit in front of a machine and have at my fingertips perhaps not the sum of human knowledge, but a pretty close approximation (the closest the race has ever seen since, perhaps, the library at Alexandria).

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