I agree that in the case the OP offers, it’s a dig. Obvious and unambiguous typos can be corrected when making such a quote, and also simple English/American spelling variations can be altered. The requirement should be that doing so does not change anything other than the spelling, that the quotation still reads the same and that no underlying subtleties are altered.
But in that case they are not quoting a published piece of writing. They are editing the source material which you provided to them.
Put it this way: Each of us has a right to decide how our prose will look on paper – or computer screen, or whatever. That includes grammatical and spelling choices.
For example, I notice a flagrant grammar error in the first sentence of DrDeth’s post (#19) above. It is not my right to decide whether that was accidental and should be corrected, or an intentional dig at pedanticism – Deth’s style is usually far above that sort of glaring error, and in context it makes a beautiful subtle comment. For me to correct it in quoting him would defeat his purpose if it were intentional – better to reproduce it verbatim with a [sic] notation, and let the reader choose.
Further, I have licensed a very few people to be my editors – the guy on whose website my writing appears, his housemate and co-editor, the mod. staff here with regard to my SDMB posts specifically, a newspaper editor with regard to my letter to the editor specifically. It is not your privilege to decide what I must have intended to say, what I ought to have said, what I should be construed as having meant – my words are mine, not yours, and you can keep your flaming hamhocks off them! They are the tools of my trade, and you have no more right tampering with them than you do the tools of the car mechanic or plumber whose professional services you have engaged.
Long time sportswriter here. I deal with this issue all the time, and it’s compounded by the fact that for a lot of the athletes I speak to, English is not their first language. It’s not my job to rephrase what they say to make it more polished, but I also don’t want to be so strictly verbatim that I make them look stupid. If a player uses a verb tense that doesn’t agree with the subject or mispronounces a word, then I’ll probably clean it up when I quote him. It’s a tougher call when a Spanish speaking ballplayer misuses an idiom or uses a word incorrectly – in those cases I usually won’t use the quote at all. You can also convey the substance of a quote without directly quoting someone, eg “Schilling said it had been a privilege to play with them.”
If I’m quoting something that’s written, I wouldn’t change a single character. Not even a punctuation mark.
You (and Indistinguishable) make a good point. Still, I agree with **GorillaMan ** in that *far too often * “(sic)” is used as a “dig”, not as a valuable tool for clarity and truth. 
Morbo – the issue isn’t really with correcting a simple and obvious spelling error; most people think that’s not completely out of line. The problem is that there’s not clear agreement on how far to go. Is it OK to correct a simple grammatical error to make a verb agree with the subject? What about changing ‘she’ to ‘he’ when the editor thinks they know who the writer was referring to? (That could be a problem if the writer was intentionally using the wrong pronoun to make a comment about gender). What about changing “CarrotTop is a horrible actor” to “CarrotTop is a horrible comedian”?
So to avoid the problem of deciding what to correct and what not to, most writers don’t correct anything, and put [sic] in to let proofreaders and the audience know that wasn’t the writer’s mistake.
>So in my example, had Schilling read his blog post aloud, they would have printed his spoken words and spelled everything properly?
An interesting point. In a literal sense, Schilling would have spoken the words, regardless of having been reading aloud, so it would be proper to write those words correctly in a written quotation. For that matter, the oral audience would have had no way to know Schilling’s paper had misspellings on it.
But in a similar vein, what about when our President speaks about the threat of “nucular” war? I can’t quite imagine reading a newspaper quote about “the threat of nucular (sic) war”. On the other hand, I honestly think fixing the word actually does change the content of the quote, giving it a bit more credibility than it deserves. Said another way, I think his obvious confusion about the word itself inevitably colors his statements, and the standard practice of quoting speakers in text hides this additional information.
I wouldn’t think that usage is correct at all. There is no error to make a note about, and it would just confuse interpretation of a perfectly good sentence.
The President is saying the word “nuclear” and should be quoted as such. His pronunciation may strike you as odd, it may even actually be unorthodox, but it doesn’t merit an altered transcription, any more than FDR should have been quoted “But the only thing we have to feah is feah itself”. The papers will end up looking like something out of Mark Twain if you decide to call so much attention to every slight deviation from your own personal pronunciation standards.
“It was an honor and a priv*l[e]ge to be allowed to play here.”
or
“It was an honor and a [privilege] to be allowed to play here.”
Thanks for the responses folks, but I want to call this one out especially b/c it’s exactly the kind of info I was looking for in my (not-so-well-thought-out) OP. Post more dude!! 
I wonder if a Great Debate is in order here? “Should typos in blogs be held to the same editorial standard as other textual quotes?”
The person writing the article could send off a little note saying “I’m about to quote from your blog, but it contains a few small spelling and punctuation errors. Journalistic integrity prevents me from correcting written material being quoted, and it will be pointed out as an error in the original. It will look better for you if you fix them now. Be aware that if you change more than the errors I’ll be forced to use the original, mistakes and all.”
That makes me think “privilege” was somehow added or replaced something else. Something different, not just a misspelling.
Ditto. If I read that, I’d wonder if the guy had said something obscene and this was the cleaned-up version I was getting. “It was an honor and a wet dream to be allowed to play here,” something like that.
Pressing the source to change their words? This seems even more journalistically icky, your last line notwithstanding.
(At least, if you do this, you should disclose it in the article.)
Of course there’s a degree of uncertainty, but if your intent, as was stated, is to spell correctly without actually reproducing the error, then some uncertainty is unavoidable.
Even the first option I gave is uncertain to a degree. You still don’t know exactly what was or wasn’t there originally instead of the * and the [e].
Well, here’s how I might actually handle such a situation. Suppose I’m preparing an article on a given subject, and have the very pleasant surprise of getting a three-paragraph-long response from a Nobelist in the field to whom I’d, as a bluesky chance, written an email asking a question. However, the gentleman is known to be severely arthritic, and his answer is liberally loaded with what are clear typoes. I would quote his response, essentially in full (with any private notes deleted) in my article – with typoes cleaned up – and a disclaimer to the reader that Dr. Eminencegris was kind enough to provide the above, from which I have removed the typographical errors his arthritis would not permit him to take care of. That would be the appropriate respect to him – not to highlight his handicap by leaving them in, but to publicly take responsibility for having altered his email to me in case I misinterpreted his intent with one or more words.
As a writer myself, I prefer to clean up typos and minor spelling mistakes in quotes unless there’s a compelling reason to the contrary.
Leaving the spelling mistakes in with a “(sic)” strikes me as generally being editorial shorthand for “This person can’t is a n00b who can’t spell properly”- even if the quoted text is from a Blog, I’d still do the quoted person the courtesy of correcting typos etc so that their words are not being detracted from by people thinking “Gosh, that quoted person can’t spell simple words! I think less of their opinions and views as a result.”
That’s just my view, though- I know there are plenty of others (especially judging by this thread) that prefer the “Verbatim quote with (sic) for mistakes” approach.
My opinion: anyone who QUOTES a written statement with alterations that are not noted is violating both the letter and the intent of the quote symbols. Yes, it may be a simple typographical error, or it may be a simple spelling error, but, then again, it may NOT be, and as Polycarp points out, keep your opinions about it, and your hands, to yourself and QUOTE the words.
Since a spoken statement cannot contain typographical errors, there is no need to worry about what the spelling was on the paper off of which the words were read. To the extent that a person’s pronunciation is different or unusual, as long as you know what word was truly intended, that’s fine; as pointed out the written word is a translation to symbols of the word meant, not the literal pronunciation used (they don’t put “Fanshaw” in the paper when that’s what gets said, for example). If, however, a person misuses a word in speaking, and you quote them, you are obligated to use the word they used, and if you want to clarify it is a mistake (presumably for the purpose of alerting to your readers that the sentence doesn’t make sense not because YOU are the idiot who can’t write, but because the speaker made the error), then you use the sic. notation.