I don't know about Mountain Lion's login requirements, but that system utilities require an admin password is perfectly normal, and has been like that for quite a while. To be allowed to do their work in the guts of the OS they need that admin access. If you think about it, you really wouldn't want anything else.
I prefer that system utilities work similarly to System Preferences, which only asks for an admin password when you ask it to do something that requires admin access; Yasu works that way, and I've never understood why other utilities don't.
