If you think it's something like post count, well, first off I don't think Toady would be so... I don't know, petty? You sound like you believe it's the case and that you're bitter about it. Perhaps you should ask Toady. He can tell you better than I can make guesses, I know that.
I meant more "doesn't bother making an official public announcement regarding a ban of someone who just joined three days ago and has no more than a dozen posts to his name" than "is harsher on newcomers". It makes perfect sense to me that he wouldn't expect anyone to notice or care about the absence of someone who, presumably, no one knows.
The same thing happens with spammers and people who come off as blatant trolls off the bat (where threads tend to be deleted rather than locked (which also means there's really no appropriate place to say "knock this shit off yo")), while more respect seems to be given to people who have been around a while and are known to some extent by the community.
I'm not bitter about it, even if I don't agree with notion of just erasing things and forgetting they ever happened, choosing to have more restraint in the case of people who'd be better known and who have spent a significant amount of time in the community is admirable, yet doesn't go so far as making them untouchable (and isn't coupled with rabid xenophobia against new members, as is so common on the internets).
I do, however, think that permabanning someone off the bat for such a minor offense, rather than a warning/mute, is unnecessarily harsh.
No, Neruz was also partially to blame here. Five strikes and you're out.
Except he hadn't done anything wrong there. By that reasoning it comes out as "the guy you were arguing with was flaming you, which is a mutable offense. For being tangentially related to his offense, being the victim of it and all, it counts as another offense on you, which makes five, which is as of now the magic number of moderator actions one can undergo, so you're permabanned".
More realistically, it could be argued that he just happened to be supporting the wrong side of the debate, albeit in a calm and rational manner, which would make it a politically motivated ban, which is just as bad, if not worse.