I'd be happy to take the penalty off your account - you've been a valuable and valued contributor for many years. Unfortunately I'm still seeing flamewar comments in your feed. I know that people have strong and valid reasons for posting that kind of thing but we just can't have that on HN, regardless of how right someone is or how legitimately they feel. It leads directly to this place burning itself to a crisp and preventing that from happening, or at least trying to stave it off, is our #1 job.
What I tell people in this position when they email us is that if they want to build up a track record of using HN as intended, they'd be welcome to email again after a while and we can take another look and hopefully remove the rate limit.